Old Malden

What is now known as Old Malden was first founded in Saxon times, although first recorded in the Norman “Domesday Book” of 1086 as Meldone, meaning, in Old English, hill (dun) with a cross or crucifix (mael). The ancient settlement grew steadily in size through the later Medieval period and into the post-Medieval. It lies in the modern London Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames.

Aside from the church of St John the Baptist (see below), there are a number of other historic buildings of note here, including the “Manor House”, originally built at least as long ago as eleventh century (although subsequently rebuilt in the seventeenth, and extended in the eighteenth), and the “Plough” public house on the green, originally built in the fifteenth century. Henry VIII is known to have held court in the old “Manor House” in the sixteenth century (and Captain Cook lived in the new one in the eighteenth).

Church of St John the Baptist

The church of St John the Baptist was originally built in the Saxon and/or later Medieval period, and subsequently rebuilt in the post-Medieval, in the early seventeenth century, in around 1611 (and extended in the late nineteenth and again in the early twenty-first). Parts of the Lady Chapel survive from the Medieval, and the south part of the nave and the tower from the post-Medieval. In the interior, some memorials also survive from the post-Medieval, including that to the one-time Lord of the Manor John Goode (d. 1627), who funded the seventeenth-century reconstruction.